Mobile

This is just a quick reminder that I’m teaching a full-day jQuery Mobile workshop on two occasions in October. For both session there are still tickets available, at the same time both have enough attendees to def. go ahead and happen! The first one is next week, October 17 in Munich. It’s part of CFCamp’s […]

I had to change the password for Telecom NZ’s “mbbmeter” application for a prepaid data SIM card the other day. I wanted to create and set a secure password, some mix of latin characters, numbers and special characters. Look at the screenshot below: It didn’t let me. It didn’t allow “symbols” – which means: special […]

The other day I needed to change the hosts file on my Google Nexus One (to actually point a domain name to a local dev environment so that I could test some mobile web application development I’ve been doing). I needed root access to do that and I ended up realising that I had lost […]

The short answer is: for D2WC 2012. Let me briefly explain: D2WC is a conference about and for designers, developers, hybrid and the famous designer-developer workflow. It will go into its third iteration in 2012 and after Dee Sadler was originally trying to get me involved with the event already in 2010, I finally went […]

This morning I posted a “Friday challenge for Vodafone NZ, Telecom NZ and 2degree Mobile”. The idea was for the three large mobile networks in NZ to come up with a response to a typical scenario of a mobile device user looking for a good and reasonably priced plan/package structure. Everyone had time until 5:30 pm today (with a potential extension of 15 minutes or so because the server had an issue) to come up with something.

New Zealand is a small country in the South Pacific. We’re far away from the rest of the world, have a quite large landmass (about the size of Germany) and very few people to fill it with (about 4.5 million compared to Germany’s 80 million). This setting creates an interesting scenario for a bunch of industries, among them the telecommunications sector.

One of the most expensive services in New Zealand (compared to pricing in other countries as well as the average income and cost of living) is using a mobile phone and in particularly data on a mobile phone. At this stage New Zealanders can use three mobile networks, provided by Vodafone NZ, Telecom NZ and 2degrees mobile. There are also a few virtual network operators like Orcon, Compass Communications and others who pretty much re-bundle offerings from one of the three large players under their own brand – I’ll keep them at the side at this stage.

After I wrote and published my post on the doomed Froyo update situation for owners of the Google Nexus One phone purchased from Vodafone in Europe, the problem has hit Australia as well. Today, Vodafone Australia has announced that they start selling Google Nexus One phones in Australia. I saw it on Twitter and tried to find out what the story is re the firmware in Australia.

When I was living in Germany (back in the days) – Vodafone Germany used to be the most annoying mobile services provider ever. They basically took any phone they were selling, disassembled the firmware and the OS and rebranded the whole bloody device with their Vodafone corporate red, Vodafone live! and all sorts of other sh*t (yes, I mean it exactly this way). Those branding efforts often used to happen so deeply inside of the device that it was literally impossible to revert them (without sending the phone to dedicated obscure de-branding services in Germany) and Vodafone often locked the devices even people on postpaid contacts.

Just the other day, I’ve received a SMS from Vodafone NZ asking me to ring 495 to learn about the new, streamlined and improved roaming charges. Interesting enough they’re notifying their customers by SMS, but that’s a different story. There are a few changes which I’m – to be polite – not really thrilled about. […]